I. Răducuţă

Abstract. After the integration of our country within the EU have occurred major changes in many areas of activity and including in the sheep breeding sector. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the evolution and situation of sheep breeding sector in Romania in relation with the sheep livestock, the number and size of sheep exploitations and sheep productions. To achieve these objectives we have studied the official statistical data, we calculated the percentage difference between the reference years and we interpreted data obtained. The results showed that the sheep livestock has increasing with 15.9% in 2010 compared with 2002 and with 10.3% compared with 2006. In present 0.69% from the sheep livestock are reared organically. In terms of number and size of sheep exploitations, the results showed that in the year 2010 there were 271,266 exploitations of sheep of which 63.9% are individual exploitations that have an average number of 4.18 heads sheep per unit and which hold these animals exclusively for self-consumption of family and only 7.5% of total exploitations have more than 100 heads, as average size of sheep farms existing in the EU. However, compared with the existing situation in 2002, the number of exploitations is  2.4 times lower in the year 2010, especially based on decreasing of small exploitations respectively those which are framed in class less than 10 heads. The study shows also that meat production and milk production in particular have increased significantly over the period considered, while the wool production decreased slightly.